arXiv AI

Help Me Help You: The Aggregate Value of Source and Target Data in Transfer Learning

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 14

Transfer Learning for Evolving Domains

The paper introduces Transfer Learning for Evolving Domains (TrED), a framework that models how data availability changes over time in real-world applications. TrED treats the entire trajectory of model updates as a single learning problem, rather than isolated snapshots, and defines a data availability process, a flexible learning protocol, and an evaluation criterion that scores the whole trajectory. The authors review existing transfer learning methods, noting that most are tailored to specific regimes and do not optimize the full trajectory, and argue that TrED is a well‑posed, unsolved research direction.

By Ricardo Ribeiro Pereira, Jacopo Bono, Hugo Ferreira, Pedro Ribeiro, Pedro Saleiro, Pedro Bizarro, Carlos Soares
arXiv AI
Sep 17

Limits of Transfer Learning

The paper investigates the theoretical limits of transfer learning, demonstrating that careful selection of transferable information and its dependence on target problems is crucial. It establishes that the degree of probabilistic change in a transfer-learning algorithm imposes an upper bound on achievable improvement. These findings extend the algorithmic search framework to a broad class of learning tasks involving transfer.

By Jake Williams, Abel Tadesse, Tyler Sam, Huey Sun, George D. Montanez
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 11

General Quantification of Covariate and Concept Shifts

arXiv:2609. 11918v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Generalization under distribution shift remains a core challenge in modern machine learning, yet existing learning bound theory is limited to narrow, idealized settings and is non-estimable from samples.

By Hongbo Chen, Li Charlie Xia
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Transfer Learning for Matrix Completion

arXiv:2507.02248v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: In this paper, we explore the knowledge transfer under the setting of matrix completion, which aims to enhance the estimation of a low-rank t...

By Dali Liu, Yuying Xie, Haolei Weng
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

Inverse Entropic Optimal Transport Solves Semi-supervised Learning via Data Likelihood Maximization

arXiv:2410. 02628v5 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Learning conditional distributions $\pi^*(\cdot|x)$ is a central problem in machine learning, which is typically approached via supervised methods with paired data $(x,y) \sim \pi^*$.

By Mikhail Persiianov, Arip Asadulaev, Nikita Andreev, Nikita Starodubcev, Dmitry Baranchuk, Anastasis Kratsios, Evgeny Burnaev, Alexander Korotin
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 20

On the Power of Source Screening for Learning Shared Feature Extractors

The paper investigates which data sources should be jointly learned when training shared feature extractors. Focusing on a linear setting where sources share a low‑dimensional subspace, it shows that carefully selecting a subset of sources—an informative subpopulation—can achieve minimax optimal subspace estimation, even when much data is discarded. The authors formalize this notion, propose algorithms and heuristics for identifying such subsets, and validate their effectiveness through theory and experiments on synthetic and real datasets.

By Leo Muxing Wang, Connor Mclaughlin, Lili Su
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 24

Relatively Smart: A New Approach for Instance-Optimal Learning

arXiv:2603. 01346v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: We revisit the framework of Smart PAC learning, which seeks supervised learners which compete with semi-supervised learners that are provided full knowledge of the marginal distribution on unlabeled data.

By Shaddin Dughmi, Alireza F. Pour